


The List: An Exercise in Behaving like Adults

by aegle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Gen, no substance here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 00:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7662874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aegle/pseuds/aegle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A piece of parchment featuring the names of several members of the Order of the Phoenix has been posted in the kitchen of Number Twelve. Everyone acts rationally and responsibly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The List: An Exercise in Behaving like Adults

The parchment appears on a Sunday evening, Spellotaped to the kitchen wall, just to the right of the doorframe. Sirius is the first to notice it and stands, head tilted a bit to one side, before gesturing to Remus. 

"Who posted it, do you think?" 

"Someone with neat handwriting," Sirius replies. It's a simple piece of parchment, uncluttered aside from a series of names, each listed just below the other. It looks, for all purposes, like a sign-up sheet, but not quite, because someone's already taken the liberty of including the signees. 

"Hit list," Remus suggests, stirring sugar into his tea. 

Sirius rubs his chin. "It's only a few of us," he says. "That's what I don't understand. Why list five people?"

"Probably someone having a laugh, Pads. Here. Now my name's on it." 

"And with that, Remus Lupin sealed his fate, forever to receive mail-order catalogues no matter how often he took up new residence," Sirius says darkly. 

"Terrifying," Remus nods, and the parchment is abandoned for the evening. 

— 

"Well, it can't have come out of thin air," Tonks says, boots thudding against the stairs. "Someone must have put it up after the last meeting. Elphias is always scribbling things. Perhaps it was him."

"Remus already suggested that," Sirius replies. "But this is legible. Doge's hands shake."

"I thought you said it was just names," Tonks says. 

"It was," mutters Sirius. "Before."

The parchment is now considerably less sparse, filled out by handwriting far more bulbous and squat. Tonks reads it and snorts.

  


_Sirius Black: practically every Byronic hero rolled into one. Would not be surprised if he kept a wife locked in his attic. (Doubt he paid attention in Muggle Studies.)_

_Severus Snape: Seems so standoffish. Anticipate a duel with SB one of these days. Exciting!_

_Nymphadora Tonks: Tries a bit too hard with the hair, but might as well do it now and not at thirty._

_Mundungus Fletcher: Avoid._

_Dedalus Diggle: Never shuts up. Dreadful gossip._

_Remus Lupin: Werewolf, apparently. Explains the absences._  


  


"Right," Sirius says under his breath. "Don't much go for women, doubt I'd marry one." He looks at Tonks. "Can't know me very well, eh?" 

"I don't try too hard with my hair," Tonks says, playing with the end of her ponytail. She frowns. 

"Revisions, then," Sirius announces. When he has finished, the entry for Mundungus Fletcher has, as an addition, "Owes me ten galleons." He's drawn a line through the description of Severus Snape. It reads, simply, "Arsehole." 

"Aren't you going to change yours?" Tonks asks him, and he shrugs.

"I'm curious to see what'll happen if I leave it," he says. 

 —

It's Friday, and soon the kitchen will be filled with noise and motion, the drag of chairs over the stone floor, the clearing of throats. But now, it's relatively peaceful, and Remus feels his eyebrow quirk upward as he looks at the parchment. 

"I can give you a l'il heart too, mate," Dung says, taking out a tattered quill from inside his coat. "You want I should put it right to the side like this one?" He gestures to the mark beside Remus's name, which they've been marveling at for the past five minutes.

"Sweet to offer, but no," says Sirius. 

Instead, Dung writes: "Ellfiyus Dog: fukin' old, innit?" 

"Beautifully done," Remus says, sitting on the edge of the table. The small, pleasantly-shaped heart hovers to the side of his name and he is reminded of love letters and teenaged girls smacking their lipstick against a fold of parchment paper, leaving ghost-imprints of their infatuation in shades of pink and crimson. But it's only a tiny heart, and for all he knows, Molly might have done it during a particularly maternal moment the previous night. 

(She'd brought over enough food to satisfy a small militia, telling Sirius to make sure, apparently, that Remus had ingested something other than tea once he'd recovered sufficiently. Sirius's interpretation of these instructions had been to mention, off-handedly, "Soup," when Remus had finally dragged himself downstairs in a post-transformation stupor.) 

"Don't encourage him," Sirius says, but Dung has started desperately trying to create some semblance of "Emmeline Vance" on the sheet, and he sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He glances over at Remus and offers a half-grin. "Guesses as to the admirer?"

"Am I admired?"

"What do you think a pretty little heart means, exactly?" Sirius asks him. 

"Means someone's got fuckin' on the brain," Dung says, as though it were obvious and he's having to explain it to children. He claps his hands together, pleased with his handiwork, and steps back from the parchment.

"What about her nose?" Sirius squints. "What have you managed, there?"

Dung taps on the parchment with a stubby finger, moving from word to word. "It says: Emmeline Vance's got a pretty enough face, but her nose is always stuck in the air." 

"Seems to be a trend around you, doesn't it?" Sirius says. "Now make it nice." 

— 

"Well, I think you all need better pastimes," Molly says, shaking her head. "Just a long list of insults. And from adults." 

"It's not all insults," Tonks interjects. "Though mine is, I reckon." 

"Have you thought about a nice chestnut?" Molly asks her, glancing at the entry labeled "Nymphadora Tonks" which now reads, having been unprotected for over a month: "Tries a bit too hard with the hair, but might as well do it now and not at thirty. Graceful as a cottage pie. Always bloody late." (And, off to the side in what can only be Mundungus Fletcher's heavy scrawl, "Legs.")

"Except the 'legs' thing," Tonks says. Truthfully, the thought of Dung considering her limbs in this manner seems less a compliment and more an inevitability, given how often she catches him eyeing female members of the Order. 

Molly makes a noise of disapproval, scanning the list. "Sirius does do a fair bit of scowling, I'll admit. What's it say here about Moody? Oh. Someone's written 'Vigilance!' Well, that's not too awful." She notices the heart beside Remus's name and chuckles. "At least _someone_ had something nice to say." 

Sirius and Kingsley are on the stairs, and they emerge into the soft lighting of the kitchen, deep in conversation. Remus follows just after, and he looks over at her when he reaches the bottom step. Molly is still tutting and tsking over the list, failing to notice that he's within earshot. 

"He ought to have someone appreciating him," she's saying. "Working as hard as he does, with his condition what it is." 

"Bit dented but runs, I find," Remus says, joining them, and Molly's face goes scarlet. 

"I was just telling Tonks that it was terribly sweet—" she motions toward the parchment, "—the heart, here." 

"I thought perhaps you'd left it," he says, and then, looking to Tonks, adds, "but it remains a mystery." There's a laughter playing behind his eyes that makes her stomach knot wonderfully, and she smiles in a way that she hopes doesn't reveal (completely) the fact that he makes her nerves hum and glow. 

She's grasping for a reply when Severus enters, takes one look at the sprawling list of scratched-out sentences and ink-blots, and sets it aflame before saying, with extreme precision in his voice, "Shall we call this meeting to order?" The parchment reduces to ash on the floor. 

Across the table, Hestia Jones, having witnessed the whole spectacle, shrugs and says, "I have more parchment, you know."

**Author's Note:**

> Just a bit of fluff. I quite like the idea of Hestia stirring things up now and again. Also, I find pre-relationship Remus/Tonks almost insufferably adorable.


End file.
